The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs (34 page)

I was living with so many levels of delusion. On the surface, I was grateful for the support. Beneath that, I was uncomfortable with it, especially the “Believe Tyler” tagline that made me appear like such a saint. Beneath
that
, I knew in my heart that I was guilty as sin—maybe not guilty of this specific charge, but guilty of living a lie. Yet I wasn’t in a position to try to enlighten my team of supporters. (
“Uh, listen, guys, thanks for everything but the truth is, I’m not
entirely
innocent …”
) Besides, I didn’t exactly have to take acting lessons in order to feel persecuted. I felt like I was being victimized—by the sport, by the UCI, by the testers, by some of the peloton, by certain members of the press, and most of all by a world that was swift to lump me into the category of “cheater,” “doper,” and “liar”
without looking at the details. So when my friends saw me as an innocent who was being unfairly railroaded, it fit well enough. When the people in my foundation wanted to organize events, I said yes. When my parents, with tears in their eyes, told me that they believed in me and were going to do everything in their power to help, I thanked them with all my heart, and I meant it.

Meanwhile, Haven and I were living in a catacomb of legal boxes. We barely slept, working seven days a week, twelve hours a day, racing through an endless jungle of problems and legal strategies. We hired experts from MIT, Harvard Medical School, Puget Sound Blood Center, Georgetown University Hospital, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. We found out the details behind the test’s development, including a tall stack of emails questioning why it produced false positives. I traveled to Athens, and got more seemingly useful material—emails from lab techs questioning the test’s accuracy. We petitioned the UCI to release the paperwork on blood tests I’d taken in July, during the Tour, and when they failed to release them, Howard Jacobs and I traveled to the lab in Lausanne and dug in like a couple of gumshoes, unearthing the paperwork we needed.

I got better at making my case with the public. I learned that if you’re vague enough, you don’t have to lie. I said things like “I’ve always been a hard worker,” and “I’ve been at the top consistently for ten years,” and “I’ve tested clean dozens of times,” and so on. I learned that if you repeat something often enough, you begin to believe it. I even took a lie-detector test to help prove my innocence, and passed. (Though, just before taking it, we Googled a few tips for beating the test. Clenching your buttocks, I remember, was one.)

To pay our legal bills, which would eventually add up to about $1 million, we sold our house in Marblehead and our little house in Nederland, the one I’d bought back when I was a neo-pro. Selling that little house hurt, but we did it because we were convinced we were going to win and be vindicated. Meanwhile, I kept training,
fueled by a new anger, taking crazy-long rides in the mountains around Boulder. I was going to show those sons of bitches. I was going to come back all the way. As our arbitration date approached, I felt myself getting more and more excited, picturing myself back in the Tour. This test was bullshit—I knew it and they knew it. I knew we were going to win. We had to win.

Then we lost.

We lost not once, but twice. First at a USADA hearing in April 2005, and then, on appeal, in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in February 2006. Their side argued the test was solid; that the emails and other materials we’d uncovered were “evidence of normal scientific debate.” We were devastated. I had no choice but to express my disappointment, serve out the rest of my two-year suspension, and rejoin the peloton in the fall of 2006.
^‡

Losing has a way of clearing your vision. We saw how naïve we’d been, how we’d thrown everything into a hopeless cause. I saw how the system really worked. This wasn’t like a jury trial—we weren’t innocent until proven guilty. The threshold phrase that USADA used was “comfortable satisfaction.” They looked at the evidence, and they decided. Despite all our work, it felt like we’d never really had a shot.

Looking back, I can see that this was the moment when things with Haven started to fall apart. Over the past couple of years, our relationship had become more of a business partnership; it often felt as if we were a couple of overworked lawyers who happened to sleep in the same bed. Until the verdicts, we had told ourselves it was all going to be worth it, that we were going to be proven innocent, we were going to wipe this stain away and then come back even stronger.

Now, in the quiet weeks after the decision, we realized how incredibly tired we were—tired of battling the system, tired of losing, tired of playing these roles of the never-say-die cyclist and plucky, supportive wife. We’d worked so hard, we’d given our absolute all, and it had all been for nothing. We tried to pick ourselves up, to tell ourselves that this was just another bump in the road, that we could tough this out just like we’d toughed everything else out. But in reality, we were finding out that toughness, and our relationship, had their limits.

By the time my final CAS appeal was denied, Lance was retired. He’d won his record seventh Tour in 2005, and had addressed his doubters from the podium. He’d said, “I feel sorry for you. I’m sorry you can’t dream big and I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.” With that, he’d ridden off into the sunset.
^§

Then, with timing that can only be described as poetic, the sport had its next great scandal. This one, though, involved someone I knew rather well. Ufe.

In late May 2006 Spanish police raided Ufe’s Madrid office—that office I knew so well—along with a couple of nearby apartments. They emerged with a trove of evidence that astonished the world. Two hundred and twenty BBs. Twenty bags of plasma. Two refrigerators. One freezer (which I presumed was good old Siberia). Large plastic totes filled with no fewer than 105 different medications, including Prozac, Actovegin, insulin, and EPO; billing information; invoices; rate sheets; calendars; lists of hotels for the Tour of Italy and Tour de France; and the bonuses he was due when a client won a stage or a race.

Now, I had known Ufe was a busy guy. I’d always known he worked with other riders—he’d told me about Ullrich and Basso
himself. But the truth was now clear: Ufe hadn’t been a boutique service for elite riders; he had been a one-man Wal-Mart, servicing what seemed to be half the peloton. Officially, the police linked forty-one riders to him; unofficially they said there might be more, including tennis players and soccer teams. Prosecutors calculated that in the first quarter of 2006, Ufe made 470,000 euros ($564,000).

JONATHAN VAUGHTERS:
The thing to realize about Fuentes and all these guys is that they’re doping doctors for a reason. They’re the ones who didn’t make it on the conventional path, so they’re not the most organized people. So when they leave a bag of blood out in the sun because they’re having another glass of wine at the café, it’s predictable. The deadly mistake that Tyler, Floyd, Roberto [Heras], and the rest of them made when they left Postal was to assume that they’d find other doctors who were as professional. But when they got out there, they found—whoops!—there weren’t any others.

As worried as I was about being sucked into the unfolding controversy, a small part of me had to salute him for his tactical brilliance. Ufe, you cunning bastard! You figured it out, you used the shadows of our world to play the angles like a master. Even being conservative, Ufe was making
millions
. You weren’t just a talented doctor. You were also a talented con man. What’s more, you knew all along that you were safe, because Spain lacked laws against sports doping.
^‖

Operación Puerto, like Festina eight years earlier, hit the sport
like an atomic bomb, smack on the eve of the 2006 Tour de France. Some implicated riders like Ivan Basso and Frank Schleck (who admitted to paying Fuentes 7,000 euros) would lamely claim that they hadn’t doped. Others, like Ullrich, had the good sense to retire (good idea, since DNA tests showed Ullrich had
nine
BBs in Ufe’s possession). The Tour went on, but it didn’t get any better: the eventual winner, Floyd Landis, whom I’d helped bring to Phonak, was popped for testosterone a couple days after the Tour ended.

I felt for all the guys who got busted that year, but I felt most for Floyd because of how it happened. He’d won the Tour in dramatic come-from-behind fashion, accomplishing what veteran observers called the greatest single ride in Tour history, a solo breakaway on stage 17 where he outrode a chasing peloton over some of the Tour’s steepest mountains. It was the gutsiest ride I’ve ever seen, especially when you consider that testosterone has fairly minimal effect on performance.
^a

After he was popped, I watched Floyd’s press conference, saw his half-hearted denials (when asked if he’d doped, Floyd hesitated and said, “I’ll say no”). I felt how trapped Floyd was. I could see he was going down the same path I did. He’d fight the test, and he’d in all likelihood lose. Watching it unfold on my laptop, I wanted to reach through the computer screen and give him a hug. I wondered how Floyd—independent, fearless Floyd—would take it.
^b

I couldn’t spend too much time worrying about Floyd, however, because the fallout from the Puerto investigation was causing me problems of my own. It didn’t take long for some of Ufe’s calendars and materials to be released on the Internet. Most of it was in code,
but one item that wasn’t was a handwritten bill Ufe had faxed to Haven, including mention of Siberia, that showed we’d paid 31,200 euros and still owed 11,840 euros. Anyone could see the 2003 doping calendar Ufe had prepared for me, the dates matching my race schedule, along with his scribbled notations for injections and transfusions he recommended. I denied that I was Rider 4142 and said I was innocent, but anybody with a brain could make the connection.

Later, others would wonder why only my race calendar was released and not similar materials related to younger, active stars like Alberto Contador, who was rumored to be the client code-named A.C. I don’t have an answer for that, other than the obvious one: the sport is skilled at protecting its assets. Faced with yet another devastating scandal, it responded with a time-honored strategy: scapegoat a few, preserve the rest, and keep moving forward.

When I was linked to Puerto, I was officially toxic. None of the big teams were returning my phone calls, and I found myself right back where I’d started in 1994: a guy on the outside, searching for a team.

In November 2006, I signed a $200,000 one-year contract with a small Italian team called Tinkoff Credit Systems, owned by a Russian restaurant tycoon named Oleg Tinkoff. Tinkoff was a bit of a rogue who was smart enough to spot a niche: he decided to sign riders who’d been popped and whom other teams were avoiding: myself, Danilo Hondo, Jörg Jaksche (he tried to sign Ullrich, but Ullrich was still suspended).

The 2007 Tour of Italy, in May, was going to be my first big race back. Before the race, I showed exactly how much my suspension had changed my attitude: I got hold of some EPO from an Italian racing friend, and dialed myself up to some decent levels. I might have been a cheater, but I wasn’t an idiot. With no BBs, I had zero
chance at winning the race, of course; winning a stage would be victory enough.

The day before the race started, the UCI, in one of its patented “let’s-pretend-to-clean-up-the-sport” moves, pressured the teams not to start any riders who were associated with the ongoing Operación Puerto investigation. Jörg Jaksche and I were booted from the Tour, Tinkoff stopped paying me, and I started looking for another team.

That fall I signed a $100,000 contract with Rock Racing, a new American team started by a charismatic fashion magnate named Michael Ball. Ball was out to create a team with a rock-and-roll vibe, and he knew that infamy can sell, if it’s packaged right. Along with me, he signed fellow Puerto refugees Santiago Botero and Óscar Sevilla. With a roster like that, we knew we weren’t going to get invited to the Tour de France. But we were good, and we had fun. In fact, we kind of relished being the bad boys of the sport; we grew our hair longer, we had cool uniforms, Ball threw big parties and drove fast cars. It felt good to let loose.